Obama turns to building a presidency

President-elect Barack Obama pivoted quickly to begin filling out his new administration on Wednesday, selecting hard-charging Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff while aides stepped up the pace of transition work that had been cloaked in pre-election secrecy.

With hundreds of jobs to fill and only 10 weeks until Inauguration Day, Obama and his transition team confronted a formidable task complicated by his anti-lobbyist campaign rhetoric.

The official campaign Web Site said no political appointees would be permitted to work on “regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration.”

On the morning after making history, the man elected the first black president had breakfast with his wife and two daughters at their Chicago home, went to a nearby gym and visited his downtown offices.

Aides said he planned no public appearances until later in the week, when he has promised to hold a news conference.

As president-elect, he begins receiving highly classified briefings from top intelligence officials Thursday.

In offering the post of White House chief of staff to Emanuel, Obama turned to a fellow Chicago politician with a far different style from his own, a man known for his bluntness as well as his single-minded determination.

Emanuel was a political and policy aide in Bill Clinton’s White House. Leaving that, he turned to investment banking, then won a Chicago-area House seat six years ago. In Congress, he moved quickly into the leadership. As chairman of the Democratic campaign committee in 2006, he played an instrumental role in restoring his party to power after 12 years in the minority.

The day after the election there already was jockeying for Cabinet appointments.

Several Democrats said Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who was re-elected Tuesday, was angling for secretary of state. But Kerry’s spokeswoman, Brigid O’Rourke, disputed the reports. “It’s not true. It’s ridiculous,” she said in an interview.

The transition team is headed by John Podesta, who served as chief of staff under former President Clinton; Pete Rouse, who has been Obama’s chief of staff in the Senate, and Valerie Jarrett, a friend of the president-elect and campaign adviser.

Several Democrats described a sprawling operation well under way. Officials had kept deliberations under wraps to avoid the appearance of overconfidence in the weeks leading to Tuesday’s election.

They said the group was stocked with longtime associates of Obama, as well as veterans of Clinton’s White House.

Record turnout

With most U.S. precincts tallied, the popular vote was 52.3 percent for Obama and 46.4 percent for Republican John McCain. But the count in the Electoral College was much more lopsided — 349 to 162 in Obama’s favor as of Wednesday afternoon, with two states still to be decided.

In terms of turnout, it looks like about 133.3 million people voted for president, based on preliminary results from the country’s precincts tallied and projections for absentee ballots, said Michael McDonald of George Mason University. Using his methods, that would give 2008 a 62.5 percent turnout rate, he said.